Category: Media

Yes, that’s exactly what he’s saying. He’s admitting the truth about unchecked immigration. It’s importing a slave class but this time they fully count for deciding how the House of Representatives is divvied up as well as somehow getting to vote.

MSNBC Legal Lunatic Frets Over America’s ‘Deep Commitment to Free Speech.’

In the ever-leftward marching world of the erstwhile American political party known as the Democrats, assaults on our most cherished constitutional freedoms are the cornerstone of their efforts to fundamentally transform the Republic.

We’re all used to them making a lot of noise about their disdain for the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms is one of the few freedoms that they’re at least a little bit honest about wanting to take away. They may not admit to their gun-grabbing fantasies, but many of them now don’t say “no” when asked if that’s the end game.

The assault on due process is mostly denial-based. They’ve been using college campuses to test market their gulag/kangaroo court approach to justice for years now. That approach was put into public practice with their treatment of the J6 defendants. When any of the Democratic elite are pressed about the J6 victims of injustice, however, they get the kind of blank stare that Joe Biden would if someone told him to find the exit on his own after a speech.

The Democrats’ assault on the First Amendment has always been the most complex of their anti-American initiatives for a couple of reasons. One is that they love to cherry-pick the First Amendment when needing justification for their war on religion or their right to riot and burn everything to the ground peaceably assemble. The other is that they need to avail themselves of the very right that they seek to destroy.

Awkward.

Leftists come at free speech from a variety of euphemism-laden angles, the most popular one of late being a concern about “disinformation.” Caterwauling about disinformation was key to the Democrats’ political weaponization of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They had so much success with it that they’re not letting it go.

The New York Post:

MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade argued Monday that the United States’ “deep commitment to free speech” makes Americans uniquely susceptible to disinformation campaigns.

McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, went on “The Rachel Maddow Show” to promote her new book, “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.” She said her “goal” with the book was to spark a “national conversation about truth and our commitment to it.”

She added, “I hope that by dissecting it, explaining it, and educating the public, we can all see disinformation for what it is so that we can begin to push back against it.”

Oh, don’t worry, Toots, freedom-loving Americans do see what you call “disinformation” for what it is — an excuse to shut down conversation about anything that runs counter to your false narratives. Because everything is “Opposite Day” when dealing with the Democrats, those rending their garments over the dangers of disinformation are far and away the greatest disseminators of disinformation. Pathological liars love to say that everyone else is lying.

While it’s fair to say “consider the source” when discussing MSNBC, the network did play a role in the aforementioned success that the Left had with their disinformation contortions in 2020.

Ms. McQuade should have borrowed a Mao jacket from Hillary Clinton for this appearance. Hers is one of the most blatantly commie opinions on free speech offered on a network that traffics in commie opinions.

Editorial Says WA Gun Control Bill ‘Uses Public Safety as Smoke Screen’

An editorial in the normally pro-gun-control Seattle Times says a gun control measure aimed at licensed firearms retailers “pushes gun control to a level of punishment for legitimate businesses.”

Singling out House Bill 2118 from among three measures still in play, the Times editorial board recognizes the restrictive nature of the legislation.

“Some lawmakers may not like the selling of guns in Washington,” the editorial acknowledges, “but it’s a legal business. The Times editorial board praised the Legislature for enacting laws that banned the sale of assault-style weapons and ammunition over the past two years. But HB 2118 unnecessarily tightens the rein on gun dealers while using the public’s safety as a smoke screen.”

It is a stunning acknowledgement from a newspaper editorial board which traditionally has supported all kinds of gun control measures.

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Time’s ‘Made By History’ Just Made Up

Once, Time magazine was one of those household names in news. They didn’t break it, but they provided more depth than your local paper really could. People trusted them and Time, back then, lived up to that trust.

Today, like a lot of news publications, they’re a shadow of their former self.

Yet, if I’m being honest, even describing them as that is far too generous. That would imply there’s at least something of the original core still there, just diminished. Instead, all we have is yet another publication ready to spout any anti-gun talking point they care to name.

For example, they recently ran a story about the NRA, premised on Wayne LaPierre’s departure, under their “Made By History” tag.

It doesn’t take long to see it really should be “Made Up History” instead.

Last month, after more than three decades as the figurehead of the modern gun lobby, longtime National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO and executive VP Wayne LaPierre stepped down. His departure comes amid a civil corruption lawsuit brought by the State of New York, which alleges that the NRA and its executives violated their non-profit status and various state and federal laws, as well as grossly mismanaging the group’s finances.

LaPierre stands at the heart of a popular narrative about the recent emergence of the radical right. He has loomed large in the organization’s changing tactics and emphasis as it evolved into a political powerhouse and an uncompromising foe of all gun control.

As the story goes, the NRA was a moderate group focused on sport and target shooting before the “Cincinnati Coup” in 1977. The revolt at the group’s annual convention ushered hardliners into power and drove the reshaping of gun politics in the U.S., including the rise of a new interpretation that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to bear arms. LaPierre joined the organization shortly after the coup and became executive vice president in 1991.

Yet, while LaPierre epitomizes the post-1977 NRA, there is more continuity in the group’s history than is popularly known. Dating back to its 1871 founding, in fact, the NRA has had one consistent priority: protecting social order and control. LaPierre articulated this philosophy after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 when he declared that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

The idea is that control of armed force should be deputized to and limited to certain populations—especially elite white men. That has always been the NRA’s driving force, and the only thing that changed after 1977 was the militarization of this organizing precept.

Now, LaPierre has his critics, to say the least, and much of that criticism at least appears to be valid. Yet there’s not a shred of evidence anywhere to support the assertion that when he said “good guy with a gun” that he meant elite white men.

First, how is it that gun owners are at once backward rednecks and also “elite white men” anyway?

Second, anti-gunners keep spouting this idea that we only favor gun rights for white people, yet black gun owners are one of the fastest growing segments, and not a soul I’ve talked to views this as anything but awesome. Another quickly growing group is women, and no one is batting an eye at that, either.

Now, here’s the problem. If this were billed as an op-ed, I’d probably be finished. I might expound on a point or two, particularly with regard to how gun control originally targeted non-white people and only allowed guns for those “elite white men” but, for the most part, I’d focus on that.

Yet this isn’t an op-ed. These are the opening paragraphs that seek to report history.

How can anyone trust any aspect of what follows when their ideological lens is so clearly divined? They’re not interested in the truth or in understanding the past. They’ve got an axe to grind and they expect you, the reader, to ignore it.

What follows from there is, in many ways, revisionism. Sure, it undermines the talking point that the NRA was nice and moderate until 1977 when they suddenly became evil, but it’s also clear that they can’t acknowledge that the right to keep and bear arms applies to everyone and that’s the line the NRA has taken in the past several decades.

There’s been no effort by any gun rights organization to differentiate rights between various racial identities. They fight for people’s right to keep and bear arms. That means people. All people

But the writer over at Time doesn’t see it that way, but since she also clearly has her own view of reality rather than, you know, reality, this is what we get.

What bothers me is how this single line, presented without evidence or context, is likely to be enough to convince people that it’s true, like the lack of evidence is, in and of itself, evidence of its validity when it’s really just journalistic petulance.

So no, Time isn’t a shadow of its former self.

It’s a zombie walking around at the behest of its anti-gun necromancer master.

Of course you interview Putin: The media now opposes freedom of the press. We live in Bizarro World.

Tucker Carlson announced on Twitter that he will be interviewing Vladimir Putin. It will be posted on Twitter.

Carlson explained why: “Here’s why we’re doing it. First, because it is our job. We’re in journalism. Our duty is to inform people.”

He went on for another four minutes but in 20 words, he gave the only explanation that matters. I wish he would drop the imperial first-person.

Among the many replies, Ian Miles Cheong said, “Massive credit to Elon Musk for allowing the video to be posted uncensored. It’ll surely be banned elsewhere.”

Alex Barnicoat tweeted, “Tucker Carlson is about to save us from World War 3 with Russia. The West needs to hear the other side of the story.”

Preventing World War 3? This is why they hate him and why they hate Trump. These idiots want another world war and they really don’t care if America loses.

All evidence points to their desire to lose so they can set up a totalitarian government. The traitors in Washington have emasculated the military and literally cut the balls off generals. They opened the border to allow our enemies in. The traitors welcome Muslim terrorists and Chinese spies. The traitors depleted our military supplies by giving them away to Afghanistan and Ukraine.

You know, FDR never gave away a daggone thing. He made our allies take out loans to pay for the war materiel we sent them.

The traitors oppose giving Putin’s side of the story, as self-servingly ridiculous as it likely will be. Carlson told the Swiss magazine, Die Weltwoche, last fall that the Biden administration prevented him from interviewing Putin.

Carlson said, “I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the U.S. government stopped me. By the way, nobody defended me. I don’t think there was anybody in the news media who said, ‘Wait a second. I may not like this guy, but he has a right to interview anyone he wants, and we have a right to hear what Putin says.’

“You’re not allowed to hear Putin’s voice. Because why? There was no vote on it. No one asked me. I’m 54 years old. I’ve paid my taxes and followed the law.”

Nevertheless, Adam Kinzinger of CNN, a former congressman, tweeted, “He is a traitor.”

Not to be outdone, Bill Kristol said, “Perhaps we need a total and complete shutdown of Tucker Carlson re-entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

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Business Insider: Very Dangerous to ‘Indoctrinate’ Young Americans That They Can Lawfully Possess a Firearm.

Get woke, go broke and learn to code. Such is the hard lesson over at Sports Illustrated after the announcement that all of their writers will soon become unemployed and the publication’s future remains “uncertain.”  Enter Business Insider.  nstead of writing about issues germane to commerce and ways to operate businesses more effectively and profitably, BI’s crack team of future coders have gone another direction.

Their latest pearl-clutching screed laments the dangers of teaching America’s young people that they have the God-given right to own a gun for lawful purposes, including self-defense.  Why, it’s almost as if BI interns took a press release from the “Brady” gun control org and decided to post it as headline news on their website.

Shudder.

From Business Insider:

The NRA wants your kid to love guns: programs promote 2nd Amendment absolutism to Kindergarteners on up

For the National Rifle Association, no American is too young to join in their absolutist defense of the Second Amendment — and that includes Kindergarteners.

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BLUF
It’s too bad none of the scores of journalism contests out there yet offers a fake news category. If one did, the 14 stories chosen by the Trace would be award winners.

The ‘most memorable gun violence journalism of 2023,’ according to the Trace
If there was a Pulitzer category for gaslighting, the stories chosen by the Trace would all be serious contenders.

The Trace, the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s antigun empire, recently published their picks for “The Most Memorable Gun Violence Journalism of 2023.”

If there was a Pulitzer Prize category for gaslighting or agitprop, the 14 stories highlighted by the Trace would all be serious contenders.

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This CNN Reporter Just Had a Come to Jesus Moment About Hamas.

A veteran CNN Middle East reporter with two decades of experience now admits that “too many of us treated the group more like an opposition party with occasional violent outbursts than a terrorist organization.”

“Journalists working in conflict zones,” Ilene Prusher wrote in a CNN op-ed this week, “too often pull punches in the interest of appearing neutral, or perhaps to ensure that they stay in the good graces of the gunmen in charge.”

Prusher concludes that “if journalists continue to interview members of Hamas, we should report their words more critically and not take their comments at face value. We should provide context that notes how unverifiable their information is and how poor their track record for accuracy has been.”

There’s a word for that: journalism. Let’s give Prusher two cheers for encouraging her colleagues to actually commit some for a change.

I might fairly ask Prusher, “What took you so long?” It isn’t as though she were ignorant of the Middle East and its major players. But since it’s my policy never to interrupt someone when they’re busy talking their way over to my side of an issue, I’ll leave her be.

“By and large, we reporters ate it up,” she explained without prompting, in no small part because “Our editors wanted us to have access to this shadowy group.”

What is access, anyway?

Last month when I was in Miami for the previous GOP presidential debate, Yours Truly (and the rest of the Townhall crew in town that night) were granted access to the post-debate spin room. That meant we would have the chance to speak one-on-one with the candidates or maybe their managers and surrogates.

Please note: It’s called the spin room because that’s where the candidates, their managers, and their surrogates go to put their spin on what just happened. Spin can be anything from putting a friendlier face on a fierce debate performance to literally (not really) polishing a turd and hoping some know-nothing reporter will pick it up and run with it.

But getting and keeping access can be a whole lot more complicit than anything that happens in a spin room between candidate and reporter.

Infamously, CNN used to downplay Saddam Hussein’s atrocities against the people of Iraq to maintain the network’s access to the Hussein regime. That was a case where the appearance of reporting the news — “Hey, we’re talking to all these Iraqi officials, so it must be real news!” — was more important to CNN than actually reporting the news. They were happy to be lied to and to repeat those lies because it filled airtime and sold commercials.

The mainstream media’s dirty little secret is that so much reporting involves little more than getting and maintaining access to important people by giving them the airtime they desire.

And yet, “How often did that stop us from reporting what they told us?” as Prusher asked in her come-to-Jesus column. “That dynamic was on display last month when many mainstream media outlets immediately repeated Hamas’ claim that an Israeli air strike had devastated a hospital and killed a big round figure of 500 Palestinians.”

Prusher and so many others are — or in her case, was — happy to trade integrity for the allure of access to a “shadowy group” who expertly preyed on their vanities.

Except, of course, for the mainstream media’s reporters and stringers who are all-in with Hamas to begin with and never had any integrity to begin with.

Milwaukee Paper Discovers ‘Gun Death’ Lie

The term “gun death” is popular among gun control advocates and their politicians who push that same agenda. It’s a simple enough term, too. It’s simply the total number of people killed with a firearm, regardless of who pulled the trigger or why.

It might even be a useful statistic in some cases.

However, when talking about guns and gun control, it’s misdirection at best and a case of lying with facts at its worst.

It’s an effort to lump all such fatalities together to make the issue seem bigger than it is. And it seems folks at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel got an eye-opener on the topic recently.

Gun deaths are rising in Wisconsin, but the people affected by it might surprise you. The narrative around gun violence is often limited to urban homicides, but the vast majority of deaths by guns are suicides. In fact, a new report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel finds that suicides make up more than two-thirds of all deaths by guns in Wisconsin.…

“Of 100 gun deaths that [occur] in Wisconsin, roughly 25 of those are homicides. And then there’s another one to 2% that are accidents or police involved shootings,” [Investigative reporter John] Diedrich explains. “The idea that 71 out of 100 gun deaths in Wisconsin are suicides was an eye-opener to me and to our readers.”

Diedrich acknowledges that suicides are, in fact, a mental health issue, but he’s paraphrased as saying that when those issues arise, gun owners have a very deadly means to take their own life.

I don’t dispute that fact. However, starting with that last point, if they already have the means to take their own life, what good would new gun control laws do?

Moving back to the deeper point, that Diedrich was shocked by this, I can’t say that I am. We’ve long known that most of the “gun deaths” cited by anti-gun activists were, in fact, suicides. We know why they do it, too. The truth is that when you look at the total number of homicides year over year and consider them against the total population of the United States, it doesn’t look nearly scary enough.

So, they lump in suicides and accidents and call them gun deaths, all in hopes that no one will dig too deeply.

When they do, they get a bit of a wakeup call.

It’s also why I really think we in the gun community need to step up and deal with mental health. We need to be champions of improvement in mental health efforts and be advocates for those in our lives who suffer from mental illness.

If we can reduce the number of suicides, we reduce the number of gun deaths. We take away the gun control crowd’s ammunition, even if that ammunition is based on what amounts to a lie.

In Milwaukee, at least one journalist has woken up to at least part of that lie. The question is whether he’ll realize the rest of it and do his part to combat the constant flow of misinformation from here on out.

Rolling Stone Blames Gun Industry For Mass Shootings – Reveals Greater Fear Of Patriot Rebellion

It’s the old leftist anti-gun standby:  Pretend as if the 2nd Amendment was drafted only to protect hunting and self defense against criminals.  Ignore the fact that the Founding Fathers explicitly created gun rights for the purpose of repelling and overthrowing a corrupt government.  Pretend as if Americans are not supposed to have access to military grade weapons when that is exactly what the 2nd Amendment was enshrined to protect.

Under the Constitution, the American militia was intended to act as the defense force for the nation.  And, the militia was made up of every able bodied male citizen.  The militia was the military (in a sense), and the militia had access to all the weapons needed to fulfill their role.  This included repeating rifles (automatic rifles), cannons, explosives and even naval ships in private hands.  The Founders never intended for a standing military to exist, nor did they ever intend for a standing military to act as a proxy in place of an armed citizenry.

As James Madison noted:

“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”    
– James Madison, January 29, 1788, Federalist No. 46     

And, as George Mason asserted:

“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
– George Mason, June 4, 1788, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention

It should be treated as a revealing condition that the establishment and corporate media consistently attack the civilian ownership of guns which they argue are “made for war.”  These guns which they refer to as “assault rifles” (because it sounds scary) are used in less than 3% of all gun crimes in the US.  They are also a small percentage of overall mass shootings in the US, yet they garner almost 100% of the anti-gun lobby’s attention.

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Media in Panic Mode Over Questions About Whether They Knew in Advance About Hamas Attack on Israel

On October 7, four photojournalists who provide reporting and photos for the likes of the Associated Press (AP), CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, and other outlets were allegedly at the Israeli border with Hamas terrorists who committed acts of atrocities against innocent Israeli civilians that shocked the world. Since an Israel-supporting news watchdog website reported the claim, everyone wants to know if these Gaza-based reporters knew in advance about the attack and, more importantly, if they could have saved lives by alerting the world about it. The question arises: Did the AP, CNN, the New York Times, and Reuters know about the Hamas terror attack in advance? 

The allegations have sent major media into panic mode and generated even more mistrust in the corporate press.

The website HonestReporting, which chronicles coverage of Israel by an increasingly one-sided press to contrast the “Pallywood” and crisis actor coverage by Hamas and its agents, asks: “Is it conceivable to assume that ‘journalists’ just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists? Or were they part of the plan?” 

Hamas terrorists paraglided and drove into the civilian populations that day and committed acts of horrific brutality. They wanted their murders and acts of terror chronicled for the world, which is why they wore GoPro cameras and apparently arranged for these traditional media photographers to go in with them.

HonestReporting reported that “four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.” The news watchdog took a close look at Elsaiah, a “freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza.”

Elsaiah “did not wear a press vest or a helmet,” the website reported. He posted a video of himself on Twitter/X saying that “everyone who were inside this tank were kidnapped, everyone who were inside the tank were kidnapped a short while ago by al-Qassam Brigades [Hamas’ armed wing], as we have seen with our own eyes.”

The website later featured an older photo of Elsaiah with the Hamas leader who planned the attack.

In war reporting, journalists are often given a heads-up and allowed to chronicle American troops heading into battle, for example. But this wasn’t an act of war — it was terror. It was murder for murder’s sake. There hadn’t been an Israeli offensive to which the Gaza terror organization was responding. Indeed, if Hamas had been wearing uniforms and acting as an “army” they would be accused of war crimes. As it is, they’re accused of crimes against humanity.

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Observation O’ The Day:
I remember when “serious” figures on the right mocked some of us for our alleged obsession with media bias. – Glenn Reynolds

Propaganda Works

Have you noticed that Republicans have been losing a lot lately?

This, in an environment where most Americans think that Democrats are screwing up the country. Why do you think that is?

Sure, hatred of Trump has something to do with it. Abortion politics has something to do with it. A lot, actually. Each of you can name an issue where Republicans are in bad odor with ordinary people, but add them all together and one thing becomes clear: propaganda works.

Why is Trump so unpopular? Was it because things got worse under his presidency? Uh, yeah, no. Things got immeasurably better, and even a lot of people who hate him will say that.

Is abortion such a drag on Republican prospects because people don’t agree that late term abortions are immoral, except in extreme circumstances? That’s not what the polls say.

Why do people think Republicans are all-in on banning books? Has anybody suggested making the publishing of any books illegal? Of course not. Democrats actively campaign to prevent the publication or sale of books they don’t like, but Republicans don’t.

So what is it?

It is the steady drumbeat of propaganda portraying Republicans as Nazi White Supremacists who want to force 11 year-olds to birth babies, schoolmarms who hate gays, and White Supremacists who hunt minorities in the dead of night. We wanted to kill grandma and deserved to be put in camps:

You can’t escape the propaganda. It is everywhere. In the schools, in the classrooms, on every university campus, and in the MSM.

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